Skyward Sword Blog, Day 1

Hello, everyone. This is a blog similar to the ones I did last year of Metroid: Other M and Halo: Reach, where I'll be recapping my experiences of a first playthrough of a particular video game, in this case, the latest Zelda.

Basically the way it'll work is this: Every day that I get around to playing some of it, I'll write down what happened, my reactions, and, the most interesting(or hilarious, depending upon which way you view it) part of all, how many times I've died.

One minor change I'm going to make from the last two times is I will make an effort to play less of the game each day, even though Zelda traditionally has been one of my favorites Nintendo series. There are three reasons for this:

A: I have to write less for each blog, which I think is a big reason I never finished the ones for Reach and Other M. I got too tired(or lazy, lazy's probably a better word).

B: I don't finish the game as quickly. As I've gotten older, my puzzle solving abilities have increased exponentially(or the puzzles in games have gotten much easier, one of the two). Just to give an example of the last three console Metroids: Prime 2 took me about 25 hours, Corruption around 12, and Other M only around 8.

C: And, lastly, because I'd like to have a life.

Actually, just kidding about the last one. I recently had surgery, so doing nothing will suit me well for a while. I'll mix in some old speed runs of Super Metroid and some SSBB to pass the time.

Enough talk, however: Here we go.

SPOILER ALERT(you have been warned)

DAY 1:

After the opening scene which reminded me of something out of Darksiders, the camera switched to Zelda, who, apparently being Link's girlfriend in this game, decides to wake him up by sending a...giant...bird thing....to get him out of bed. Apparently they don't manufacture alarm clocks in the sky. I got control of Link and went out to find Zelda, and, after some rather odd conversations where I learned how to dash, climb, roll, and the likes(apparently "z-button" is common language in the sky as well), I got asked by an old man to save some guy's weird pet from a tall roof.

Combining my newly re-learned skills, I retrieved the pet from the roof and then went off to find Zelda. After finding Zelda, she got mad at Link for not practicing flying these bird things enough, but then her dad showed up and told her she was just jealous(he must make this relationship run SO smoothly). Zelda responded by pushing Link off the edge of the town into the endless abyss below.

More or less. Actually, Zelda was just trying to get Link to practice flying. But Link's bird never showed up, so Zelda had to save him. Then I had to go on a quest to find my bird, who apparently had been hidden by some...rather....colorful thugs, to say the least. Dude had a red mohawk, and a crush on Zelda, which, combined with the odd job of script, is making the dialogue get more and more awkward by the second.

Anyways, after a long walk around Skyloft, which involves me getting a sword, beating up some bats and slimes and finally retrieving my bird, I enter this race, of which the winner gets to graduate to have the chance to get to a status from which they can then graduate to knight(sorta like graduating from elementary school). Anyways, the objective is to get some statue from a bird before your opponents(not so ironically the thugs from earlier) do. However, the opponent A.I. is flat out stupid and it doesn't take long for me to get the bird's controls down and nab the statue for the win(but not before they start throwing an apparently spawning infinite supply of mushrooms at me...)

So Link wins, gets a sailcloth that acts like a parachute, and then goes flying out with Zelda, which is win, in true Nintendo fashion, the princess gets kidnapped by what appears to be a giant chain chomp. Link wipes out and wakes up in Skyloft, where he awakens to Zelda's dads face who asks him where Zelda is. Link...through an apparently amazingly complex series of hand gestures...tells him, and then Zelda's dad walks off. Link then gets visited by some angel named Fi, who leads him through a rather dangerous path, to say the least, to a sword called the goddess sword. Zelda's dad shows up again and proclaims Link a hero. Link then gets his old clothes(or, I guess, since this is the first Zelda chronologically, new clothes).

And that's where I stopped playing.

DEATH COUNT: 0

My first impressions are that these sword things are a little clunky. Hopefully that'll change with usage. My other main complaint so far is how they seemed to try to implement the Wii control into everything. I would have much preferred to control my bird with the nunchuk instead of the Wii remote, and then using the nunchuk to assist in certain sword strikes is annoying. Maybe it's just a matter of timing, though.

As for the sword strikes, that's pretty easy once you get to playing more. Tip there is to simply act like you're about to do a spin slash yourself: Put the nunchuk and remote right next to each other, and horizontally, or vertically, slash. The only annoying thing about that, is if you're wildly slashing, and flailing your arms, it tends to read a lot of vertical spin attacks. =P